The clerk has begun to call the roll on Bernie Sanders’ amendment calling for a one-time audit of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending activities during the recent financial crisis.

Rep. Ron Paul Paul urged the passage of both the Sanders and the Vitter amendments, and Senators will get a chance to vote on them this morning. The vote is expected at 11:30am ET, with side-by-side votes of both amendments. This could hold some peril for both amendments if Republicans spurn the Sanders compromise and Democrats spurn the Grayson-Paul language.

While some are celebrating the Sanders’ Audit the Fed compromise as a victory, Ron Paul isn’t one of them. And according to the Matt Hawes of the Campaign for Liberty, David Vitter will be offering up the original Grayson-Paul amendment as a stand-alone amendment.

In a fiery speech on the Senate floor, Russ Feingold conditioned his support for the Wall Street reform measure on adding a multitude of amendments that would break up the mega-banks, cap size and leverage and restore the firewall between commercial and investment banks. He even went so far as to say that he would not vote to end debate on the bill unless these and other serious banking reforms were part of it.

The choice facing Senators is clear — empower the same exact regulators who failed previously, or fundamentally change the way Wall Street does business, to the benefit of all.

Sen. Al Franken has quietly come up with an amendment that would change the way the rating agencies and their issuers do business. His amendment, co-sponsored by Bill Nelson and Chuck Schumer, would set up an office inside the SEC that would assign initial rating requests to the accredited rating agencies, rather than have the issuer hire the raters.

Chris Dodd just said on the floor that “it is my hope” that nobody will filibuster amendments, and that they’ll get an up or down vote. In other words, the agreement reached was not to have artificial 60-vote thresholds, but it’s entirely possible that an individual Senator will filibuster a specific amendment.

A minor breakthrough–emphasis on minor.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ office believes that his amendment calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve will “probably” require 60 votes in order to pass and get into the broader financial reform bill, whether because of a bipartisan agreement on vote thresholds for amendments or a filibuster from a Senator opposed to the amendment.

It should be noted that an amendment by Chuck Grassley on a version of audit the Fed passed 95-1 last year, and an amendment almost identical to Sanders’ amendment got a 59-39 vote last year as well. Three of those who voted no on that amendment – Bob Bennett, Orrin Hatch and Roger Wicker – have already co-sponsored this amendment. So theoretically, there are 62 votes in the Senate for this amendment regardless of the threshold used.